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OLEG

Well, I’ll be damned.

If it isn’t Matvey fucking Martinek.

It’s been a hot minute since I last laid eyes on the preening mudak and that gigantic ego he totes around with him wherever he goes.

His hair is longer than I remember, though greasier and stringier, too. He’s as tall as I am but he’s carrying at least fifty pounds of extra padding.

“Where were you?” Artem hisses, appearing out of one of the boardrooms, his eyes wide and frantic. “He’s been here for over an hour. Showed up without warning and demanded to speak to you.”

“About what?”

“Fuck if I know. He refused to say anything about it to any of us.”

I observe him for a while, watching how he intimidates my staff, pulling from a predictable bag of tricks. He sneers at the men and leers at the women, displaying his prominent, sharpened canines in both cases.

“This should be good,” I mutter under my breath before I push through the doors and enter my office suite.

My assistants have never looked more relieved to see me. I notice Abigail praising the heavens while pointedly looking up at the ceiling.

Suppressing a smile, I walk over to Matvey. “Matvey, long time no see.”

“Lucky for you, Oleg,” he barks. “If we’d met sooner, you might not be here at all.”

I want to throw my head back and cackle. This asshole really thinks he can intimidate me on my own turf? The fucker has balls bigger than his ego.

He’s the oldest of the three Martinek brothers, which typically would mean that he would be next in line to inherit his father’s Bratva.

But Vladimir Martinek was a mean-spirited, bullying bastard of a pakhan who ruled through fear and threats. It has long been public knowledge that Matvey wouldn’t simply inherit the crown simply because he was the oldest.

He would have to earn the right.

That served Vladimir’s purpose perfectly. It made his younger two sons ruthless and conniving and his oldest son bitter.

“Don’t make me kick you out before you’ve had a chance to say what you’ve come here to say, Matvey. I could use a good laugh.”

Then I turn and saunter into my office, forcing Matvey to swallow his retort and follow me.

I pour myself a whiskey, pointedly ignoring Matvey, before taking a seat at my desk.

He stays standing, feet spread wide like we’re on a rocking boat, trying to intimidate me by dominating the space.

I stuff down the urge to yawn. Instead, I take a sip of my whiskey.

“I have work to do, Matvey, so if you wouldn’t mind getting on with it…”

“The body,” he growls. “The body you left on our father’s doorstep.”

“You’re going to have to finish your sentences, my friend.”

With a flick of his gorilla-like arm, he shoves off the simple glass statuette I’d been awarded from some chamber of commerce or another several years before.

It clatters to the floor, cracking without shattering.

I sigh. “If you keep behaving like a five-year-old, I’m going to have to send you to your room without supper.”

“You fucking?—”

“Yes, I sent you a body,” I cut him off at the pass. I’m gonna have to take control over the situation if Frankenstein’s monster here can’t marshal his powers of concentration long enough to stick to the topic. “It was my answer to the threat you made against me and my family.”

Matvey’s eyes narrow. “You’re referring to the attack against your uncle?”

“Boy, did you get there fast!” I pretend to applaud. “It’s almost like you’re well-informed.”

His glare turns to a smug sneer. “Don’t even try it, Pavlov. We both know who’s really responsible for the attack on your uncle.”

“Enlighten me.”

“You’re the only one who stands to gain from offing the old man,” Matvey says. “Two plus two is four.”

“And you do math, too! Bravo, Matvey. You’ve clearly been studying hard.”

He sneers again and spits on my rug. “The facts are the facts, Oleg.”

“I sense a list is forthcoming. Don’t keep us waiting.”

“You haven’t visited your uncle in the hospital even once!” he harrumphs with disappointing predictability. “With him out of the way, you can usurp him and take the company. Not to mention you can fund and distribute the surveillance system that you have been hawking for months now, despite your company’s distaste for it.”

I grin again. “Again, I’m impressed by your depth of knowledge. It’s almost like you learned how to read a newspaper since the last time we spoke.”

He doesn’t take the bait this time. “You don’t care about your Bratva or your business. The only thing you care about is lining your own bank account.”

I tut him with a wagging finger. “Now, you’re just projecting, Matvey.”

The big idiot opens and closes his mouth like a steroid-infused goldfish. “You deny it?”

“I absolutely deny it.” I set down my whiskey glass. “It’s true that I want the top spot at this company. It’s true I’m ready to take over the mantel of pakhan . And it’s also true that I’ve been preparing my surveillance system for launch for a long time now. But none of that means I tried to murder my uncle.”

“Your uncle was a friend to the Martinek Bratva?—”

“I’m painfully aware.”

“He told us he was worried you might do exactly this.”

“I’m sure he did.”

Matvey’s eyes bulge. This meeting is quite obviously not going the way he had planned.

“Don’t you understand what I’m saying?” he trumpets, his thick neck going red. “We can involve the police, start an investigation. Not only will your reputation be ruined, your business will crumble. You’ll be put behind bars!”

I feign concern. “I’m guessing there’s a way to avoid all that?”

“Yes!” Matvey jumps. The moron truly can’t read a room. “All you have to do is sign over fifty-one percent of your shares to Martinek Industries and allow a nominee of my father’s choosing to join the board of Pavlov Industries.”

“And you’ll make all this go away?”

“Yes.”

“What if I refuse?”

He licks his lips as though he can taste my imagined surrender in the air. “Then I’ll make good on my promise and serve the cops all the evidence they need to bury you. I’ll fucking ruin your empire, your reputation, your Bratva. They’ll bury you beneath the jail.”

I make a show of checking my phone. “My God. Sounds terrible.”

“You think I’m bluffing?”

I scoff in his pink, flushed face. “You really think idle threats will scare me?”

“Maybe I should threaten that whore you knocked up then,” he hisses. “Will that scare you?”

And that’s the line.

I erupt out of my seat, sending my fist careening into Matvey’s jaw.

Caught by surprise, he flies backwards, collapsing into the chair he refused to accept.

It splinters underneath his bulk, with Matvey left lying among the rubble.

“I’m afraid you’ve worn out your welcome, asshole,” I spit down at him. “Time to go.”

Matvey blinks up at me, trying to recover his scowl and bravado. “You’ll pay for that.”

“You’re the one who’s going to pay. For every scheme, lie, and threat you’ve made against my family, you’ll pay in pounds of flesh.”

“You don’t have a family. What you have is a lying, white trash bitch and a bastard who was fathered by Drew Anton.”

And that’s the second line.

I explode on him like a powder keg, railing against him at full force. At first, the only thing he can do is block me with his forearms poised over his face.

But I manage to get in through the cracks.

One well-aimed hit and his nose breaks under my fingers, blood spurting from both nostrils.

I’m nowhere near done with the asshole when the doors to my office burst open and Artem runs inside with several of my vors .

“Oleg!” Artem yells as I try to sidestep him to land another hit on Matvey. “Oleg, stop! Enough!”

I know why he’s stopping me. As tempting as it is, I can’t kill the motherfucker without escalating the already fraught situation.

Coming to blows is inevitable; we both knew that.

But I’m not the stubborn, violently inclined young man I used to be. My pride is tempered by something far greater.

Honor and duty.

To Sutton and my unborn child.

Artem gets in between us as three of my men restrain Matvey and drag him to his feet. Two more have their weapons pointed right at his head.

Matvey looks like a beaten corpse, the way he hangs limply between my soldiers, his face unrecognizable. His left eye is swollen so badly you can barely see it. His nose will need a full reconstruction and blood paints the bottom half of his face like a muzzle.

If you ask me, it’s an improvement.

I push Artem’s hands off me and take a step towards Matvey, who snarls at me like a rabid dog.

“Another word from you and I will give the order to my men to pull the trigger,” I warn him. “Now, listen closely. You will be allowed to walk out of here with your life. Consider it a debt you owe me. But I expect you to take a message to your father.”

I wait pointedly and after a long few seconds, Matvey jerks his head in a tiny nod.

“He has twenty-four hours to hand over Drew Anton or else I’ll interpret your actions here today as a declaration of war between the Martineks and the Pavlov Bratva. And trust me, motherfucker: None of you will survive it.”

I hold his gaze steadily, making sure he understands what I refuse to say out loud.

No one threatens my woman and gets to walk away unscathed.